


Surrender

by ishiptheships



Series: I'm gonna ruin Claude's whole career [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, F/M, Me: i'm going to ruin claude's whole career, Trans Male Character, and it gets even sadder, follow up to my recent fic, please read Retreat before u read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22932568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishiptheships/pseuds/ishiptheships
Summary: The wind picks up to nip gently at the back of his neck, and Claude hopes she’s finally free.--CF route. Claude POV. Claude goes back after the fall of Derdriu.
Relationships: Hilda Valentine Goneril/Claude von Riegan
Series: I'm gonna ruin Claude's whole career [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648216
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	Surrender

**Author's Note:**

> heh heh heh here's a follow up to my last fic, Retreat. PLEASE READ THAT BEFORE YOU READ THIS it will make a lot more sense
> 
> enjoy

Claude tries to not let the smell bother him as he wanders through the docks of Derdriu.

He shed his uniform hours ago. He’s no longer a leader after all, not since the fall of Derdriu and the Alliance. Not after the battle that stained the docks with blood before it poured into the sea.

The entrance to Derdriu faces away from the sunset, but the whole place still looks like it was bathed in red. Bodies littered everywhere, civilians would not come out of their homes after the battle. Probably mourning the fall of a country or avoiding the bloodshed. Probably both.

His steps don’t even make a sound as he wanders through the maze of fallen soldiers, most of them Alliance aligned, when he finds what he’s looking for, finally. Hilda is exactly where he had placed her on his map, near the three entrances of the city—just as he told her to. Every step he takes towards her broken body has his heart sinking lower and lower.

Eyes, half open, pink irises dull, straight hair matted with her own blood, Hilda is dead. There’s no hope anymore, even with every inch of his being wishing that there was some chance, _some chance_ of her surviving. Instead, he stands next to what was his best friend and closes his eyes.

He remembers earlier that day, watching, as he realized how quickly his plans were going down in flames. Edelgard’s army overwhelmed the Almyran reinforcements with ease. Nader flew off after heavy loss and a deep wound to his shoulder, following his orders. Claude saw to it that he had it healed as soon as possible. Not too long after, Claude saw his tiny pink menace, hold her own against the Imperial Army. She, alone, was holding the line.

But even she couldn’t stop a meteor.

Claude had watched in horror as the large rock shot from above and crashed onto her. He held his breath, hoping that she clung to her life.

Once the rubble and dust cleared, he saw that she was standing, but barely. Her weight was on her right side, her left arm and leg crushed and bent at a horribly painful angle. Hilda had shouldered her relic on her right shoulder. Claude could see her ragged breath from meters away. She was wheezing.

 _Retreat. Fall back._ Claude’s stare bore onto the back of Hilda’s head. _Surrender. Stay alive._

She had always said she would never die for someone else. When it came to it, _her_ life was always worth saving. He always admired that about her. He _relied_ on that aspect on her to come back to him.

_So why didn’t you?_

Claude stares at Hilda’s broken body, a stab wound through her torso, her blood sticky and staining the ground below. He had seen her fall too, a sword through her body, time slowing, a horrible sound, and out again and she fell—for real this time.

He ignores the tears biting at his eyes and forces himself to look at her empty gaze. Her head is turned to her left, and after joining her line of vision, he slowly realizes that she was looking towards the docks. Did she hear him scream her name? Was his horrified face the last thing she saw?

It’s hard to breathe suddenly, and Claude looks down at his feet, the soles of his boots covered in blood. He lowers himself down and kneels in front of her. With a heavy sigh, he reaches over and closes her eyes.

Suddenly he’s taken back to the night before, her hands in his, as she lay next to him. How her eyelashes rested against her cheek like petals finally landing in water after getting blown away by the wind. And how she had kissed him. _Oh_ , how she kissed him.

Of course, Claude had kissed other people before. Hilda knew that. Maybe she didn’t know he hadn’t _been_ been with anyone before, but who cares? It felt _right_ and that mattered.

It surprised Claude—there was no way of knowing whether she was interested in him or not in the past. Hilda was illusive, evasive, never bound by one thing or another. The only real constant was her faith in what he believed in. And her loyalty to him—as a friend of course. That’s all they ever were. Friends.

And Claude could have forever lived with that. He was okay with having his feelings unrequited. Though it had hurt, he valued his friendship with Hilda first; as long as she was in his life, that was all that mattered. Maybe that was selfish.

But the events of the night before? Confusing. Was that how she was feeling all along? Had she loved him back? Or was it just another one of her ways to release the tension? The fact that he will never know fuels frustration in his belly.

Why didn’t he just tell her before she was gone? Why didn’t he love her like she deserved? Claude hung his head. That feeling of her strong arms bringing him close and her skin soft against his could have been for longer than that one night.

He hoped it was a sign she was ready to show herself to him, to open up. Maybe if they both lived, he would have tried and pretended it was just a one-night thing—or that he could separate his feelings from anything physical.

How stupid. A tear escapes his left eye and he furiously wipes it away.

“Kiddo.”

Claude swallows the lump in his throat and barely turns towards the man wandering behind him.

Nader steps just outside the shadow Claude makes, long and cold against the angry red of the sunset staining the cobblestone. He doesn’t say anything, but Claude can feel his eyes on him.

“She was a good one.” He says, carefully, knowing any wrong word can shatter Claude to pieces.

Before Claude loses his courage, he slips his hand into a pouch at his hip and fishes around to do what he came back to do.

He finds the ring, heavier than he remembered, and carefully slips it on Hilda’s paled finger. Almyran gold would have looked good on her, he decides.

Maybe in a different world or timeline, when they both survived or there was no war to begin with and years down the line, he could have given that to her with full confidence. With a weighted sigh, he brushes the hair from Hilda’s blood-smeared face one last time and stands. When he turns, he disregards Nader’s incredulous expression, passes by him, and looks out onto the sea. The wind picks up to nip gently at the back of his neck, and Claude hopes she’s finally free.

Nader seems alarmed when Claude doesn’t decide to look back. “Hey, hey, are you okay?”

 _It’s all my fault it’s all my fault it's—_ Claude nods and forces his lips into the smallest smile. He knows it won’t reach his eyes, so he doesn’t turn around.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”


End file.
